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Louis Agassiz Quotes

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss biologist and geologist recognized as an innovative and prodigious scholar of Earth's natural history. Agassiz grew up in Switzerland. He received doctor of philosophy and medical degrees at Erlangen and Munich, respectively. After studying with Cuvier and Humboldt in Paris, Agassiz was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel. He emigrated to the United States in 1847 after visiting Harvard University. He went on to become professor of zoology and geology at Harvard, to head its Lawrence Scientific School, and to found its Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Agassiz is known for his regimen of observational data gathering and analysis. He made vast institutional and scientific contributions to zoology, geology, and related areas, including writing multivolume research books running to thousands of pages. He is particularly known for his contributions to ichthyological classification, including of extinct species such as megalodon, and to the study of geological history, including to the founding of glaciology.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, Agassiz's resistance to Darwinian evolution, belief in creationism, and the scientific racism implicit in his writings on human polygenism have tarnished his reputation, and led to controversies over his legacy.



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✵ 28. May 1807 – 14. December 1873
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Louis Agassiz: 8   quotes 0   likes

Famous Louis Agassiz Quotes

“The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.”

Louis Agassiz

Geological Sketches (1870), ch. 9, p. 234 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=252

“The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the old beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive light, there must have been light to enter it.”

Louis Agassiz

Geological Sketches (1870), ch. 2, pp. 31–32 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=49

“Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it has been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it.”

Louis Agassiz

As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan L. Mackay, ( p. 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=KwESE88CGa8C&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=every+scientific+truth+goes+through+three+stages+first+people+say+it+conflicts+with+the+bible+next+they+say+it+had+been+discovered+before+lastly+they+say+they+always+believed+in+it&source=web&ots=DKSjGVklFG&sig=TGpJ6LSI9CE4s7Nu8wUiGAq3rgI)

“The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world.”

Louis Agassiz

Methods of Study in Natural History (1863), ch. 4, p. 42 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015065771407;view=1up;seq=56

“The crust of our earth is a great cemetery, where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have written their own epitaphs.”

Louis Agassiz

Geological Sketches (1870), ch. 2, p. 31 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=49

“The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge.”

Louis Agassiz

Evolution and Permanence of Type (1874)

“Foldings of the earth's crust, low hills, extensive plains, mountain-chains and narrow valleys, broad table-lands and wide valleys, local chimneys or volcanoes, river-beds, lake-basins, inland seas,—such are some of the phenomena which, disconnected as they seem at first glance, have nevertheless been brought under certain principles, and explained according to definite physical laws.”

Louis Agassiz

Geological Sketches (1870), ch 4, p. 98 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=116

“But whatever its defects, the classification of Linnæus was the first attempt at grouping animals together according to certain common structural characters.”

Louis Agassiz

Methods of Study in Natural History (1863), ch. 1, p. 7 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015065771407;view=1up;seq=21

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